My Dad’s friend applied to MI5 as a joke and got a phone call the next day asking him for an interview for quite a good post. The pay was much, much less than his engineer’s pay so he knocked it back.

I personally looked at the MI6 recruitment site, and it shouldn’t be much trouble getting a job with a law degree. Something about people trained as a lawyer that makes them perfect for subterfuge, backstabbing, deciet and lying.

Heh, it’s not just the CIA, either. Apparently the Aussie politicians are at it, too.

FEDERAL Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has described as “odd” news reports that Prime Minister John Howard’s departmental staff have been caught editing Wikipedia to remove details that might be damaging to the government.

“My own personal staff, I’m sure look through Wikipedia to make factual changes, no excuses about that, but using public service departments to make sure the truth is delivered according to Howard?”

Fairfax reports today that staff in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have made 126 edits to Wikipedia, on subjects ranging from the children overboard affair to Treasurer Peter Costello.

“On Wikipedia anything can appear,” Mr Rudd said.

“It is entirely legitimate for your personal political staff to make changes of a factual nature, but to engage public servants to go out there and re-edit history, it strikes me as odd to say the least.”

A new website - Wikiscanner - which traces the digital fingerprints of people who make changes to entries in the online encyclopedia, identifies the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as the source of the edits.

Wikiscanner also identifies Department of Defence employees as the most prolific Wikipedia contributors in Australia.

Wikipedia is promoted as the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”.

The Department of Defence said yesterday it would ban defence staff from accessing the encyclopedia.

Defence computers were found to have made more than 5,000 edits to Wikipedia entries, including articles on the “9/11 truth movement”, the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A Dutch royal couple acknowledges altering a Wikipedia entry about a 2003 scandal that forced the prince to renounce his claim to the throne.

Prince Johan Friso, son of the reigning Queen Beatrix, and Princess Mabel of Oranje-Nassau are the latest to be embarrassed in a spate of discoveries of vanity changes to Wikipedia entries. Such self-serving amendments are frowned upon in the Web encyclopedia that “anyone can edit.”

The original scandal broke in 2003 when Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende refused to support the prince’s marriage to the princess, then known as Mabel Wisse Smit.

The prime minister said he objected because she had given him “incomplete and incorrect information” about a romantic liaison she once had with a druglord. Wisse Smit later conceded knowing the drug dealer but denied any sexual relationship.

With government approval of the marriage withheld, the prince had to choose between Wisse Smit and his place as second in line to the throne. They married in 2004.

On Jan. 8, 2006, someone using a computer at Huis ten Bosch, the royal palace in The Hague, altered the Wikipedia entry on Wisse Smit that had said she “gave misleading and false information” to Balkenende. The new entry removed the words “and false.”

Wikipedia shows the time and IP address

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The prime minister said he objected because she had given him “incomplete and incorrect information” about a romantic liaison she once had with a druglord. Wisse Smit later conceded knowing the drug dealer but denied any sexual relationship.

. . . . .

On Jan. 8, 2006, someone using a computer at Huis ten Bosch, the royal palace in The Hague, altered the Wikipedia entry on Wisse Smit that had said she “gave misleading and false information” to Balkenende. The new entry removed the words “and false.”

So, did they actually lie, and then try to hide the evidence of their lie on Wikipedia? Or was the Wikipedia article wrong, and it was fixed by them?

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